1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus and an information processing method, and to a recording medium therefor. More particularly, the present invention relates to an information processing apparatus and an information processing method, in which an information processing apparatus controls another information processing apparatus so as to allow recording of a broadcast signal and relevant information and so as to allow selection of a program by reading the recorded relevant information in order to play back the selected programs, and to a recording medium therefor.
2. Description of the Related Art
A technique is being progressively applied in which a video cassette recorder records relevant information, such as the title of a recorded program, the time recorded, and the recorded program length on a cassette tape in which video data is recorded, and reads this recorded relevant information so as to display it in a list; by selecting a program from the list, the selected program may be played back from the cassette tape. As an IC card for recording and managing the relevant information of programs recorded in such a manner, there is available one called a “SmartFile” (trademark). This IC card is formed so as to be affixed to a cassette tape. When the tape cassette is loaded into the video cassette recorder, the video cassette recorder records relevant information in the IC card affixed to the cassette tape, reads the recorded relevant information from the IC card as necessary, and displays the information in a list, so that a selection may be made from the list in order to play back the selected recorded program.
When a video cassette recorder capable of playing back a cassette tape having this IC card is connected to what is commonly called an IRD (Integrated Receiver-Decoder) which receives a digital satellite broadcast using an IEEE 1394 serial bus, it is possible to transmit content information representing the contents of the program received by the IRD to the video cassette recorder via the IEEE 1394 serial bus and to record the content information in a cassette tape.
However, in the above-described method, writing to and reading from the IC card can be performed only by an operation from the main unit of the video cassette recorder or by an operation from a remote controller, resulting in a problem in that relevant information corresponding to the content information received by the IRD cannot be recorded in the IC card.